re: Ever climb a fire tower?

I’ve been up a tall water tower a few times. Don’t let that little fence deter you

Grand gulf military park in port Gibson has one you can climb.

I went up two on Brushy Mountain in Virginia decades ago. They were still working towers then. I'll never forget the views (back when the air was clear and a front had come through). I'll also never forget that those towers were more rickety that I expected and contributed to my fear of heights, especially man made tall objects.-

They are high as shite. I don't like heights.

I climbed one in rural ms many times during my teen years. the two bottom flights didn't have steps but you could just walk up the metal brackets that were there from the old steps. it was best to walk all the way up the same way. most of the steps were good but a few weren't.

We had one on our property when I was a kid. Still manned, the watchers had to drive up our driveway when changing shifts every few days. I got to know one.

The state leased one of Dad's barns way out on the back forty where the tower was .... where they kept a fire plow on a trailer hitched to a government issued truck. If a fire was spotted .... man on fire watch came down a fire pole, jumped in the truck and hauled the plow to where the smoke was showing.

(I grew up in Georgia Pacific country, Prosperity, SC)

The tower itself was part of the property Dad bought around Lake Murray in the early 60s. Of the hundreds of acres ... this tower was actually part of an airstrip that Doolittle's Raiders used to train for their bombing run.

The wind socks, the poles leftover from WW II, were used to reinforce the fireplace in this massive two sided fireplace that was built in our lakehouse.

Biggest fire ever spotted from that tower? It actually was on Dad's property ..... two kids fricking around in the woods, burned about 800 acres.

Mom and Dad had a restaurant. They kept those firetower guys well fed. I climbed up there many times taking them food. Learned to repel off of that tower. Never was afraid of heights ... which I guess is why I jumped out of planes.

A tornado took out that tower in '86.

400 acres or so of airstrip, Dad had planted with pines .... it's been pulpwooded a few times since then. Most of that property is now lake subdivisions.

Damn though .... great place to grow up, hunting and fishing.

They found one of Doolittle's planes in the bottom of the lake some years ago .... I grew up hunting rabbits on that airstrip, and waving at the towermen. They were loners. They lived up in that tower during their shifts. Helluva view looking over those hills and out on Lake Murray. Sometimes my Grandfather would come riding up on his buckskin horse Honey, telling me it was time to come home for supper. I'd run beside Honey and him all the way home ... unless it was raining, then I'd hitch a ride.

They world was just a simpler, better, place.

I miss it.

I miss all of them.

I was lucky.

Haven't thought about that fire tower in a long time.

I'll end it with this

There was an old homesite on that property .... nothing but a fireplace remaining from pre Civil War.

When we built our house Dad liked to have killed me, hauling bricks and mortar to him while he laid bricks for that fireplace.

And when he and I walked out there on the old airstrip and cut all those windsocks down to use as steel reinforcement in that fireplace .... I asked him, "Dad, why do we have to fill this fireplace solid? Why do all this metal in there?"

He said, "because Son, see that old fireplace out yonder, the old Bedenbaugh homestead from the 1840s? Just like that, long after you and I are gone .... this fireplace you and I are building will still be here. Hopefully this house too, but this fireplace will even outlast the oak trees we're planting. Your great grandsons will know we built this."

He was right I think.

I miss him.

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the towermen. They were loners.

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Surveys show that they jerked off at work 5.8 times more than the average forest industry employee.

How about the one that is in Waldheim, over around Covvington and Abita Springs? Is it still around? I always thought that would be a nice view.

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How about the one that is in Waldheim, over around Covvington and Abita Springs? Is it still around? I always thought that would be a nice view.

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I climbed this one when I was in Boy Scouts. I, too, wonder if it's still there.